3-D Printing: Additive Works Joins the Altair Partner Alliance

TROY — The engineering technology developer Altair Inc. anounced that Amphyon, 3D printing software from the Bremen, Germany-based Additive Works GmbH, has been added to the Altair Partner Alliance.

Amphyon is a simulation-driven, process software for powder bed-based, laser beam melting additive manufacturing processes. It allows for automatic optimization of part orientation as well as a build-up process simulation and the adaption of process parameters in order to achieve a higher part quality and more process stability.

“Amphyon’s innovative approach to 3D printing simulation provides an efficient and practical solution to benefit a wide range of industrial users involved with designing and printing complex metallic parts,” said Subir Roy, senior director of industry solutions at Altair. “The GPU based software with its intuitive GUI enables the user to do trade-off studies for part orientation as a function of accessibility, support volume, build time etc. Distortion calculations from simulation can be used to compensate the part geometry to minimize deviation from the design target.”

Altair officials say Amphyon saves money, time and energy in the development of additively manufactured components. By integrating fast numerical process analysis and simulation into the process chain, surface quality and shape accuracy can be increased without the need for further action by the user. Amphyon consists of several modules which support the pre-processing steps and enhance the process itself.

There are three major applications Amphyon and its modules focus on: helping designers learn how to deal with AM and its issues, helping researchers study process physics by numerical simulation, and helping production optimize pre-processing and build data in a few steps.

“Amphyon was designed to replace the experiment driven development of build-up strategies in laser beam melting with simulations and geometry analyses,” said Nils Keller, co-founder and CEO of Additive Works. “Due to the numerically calculated knowledge about process-induced thermal and mechanical loads, the build-up process can already be optimized on the level of pre-processing. This will save HyperWorks users a lot of resources and additionally enhance the part quality as well as the level of automation.”

An introductory webinar for Additive Works will be held Tuesday, July 11, at 10 a.m. Eastern time.

Altair’s HyperWorks software applies a subscription-based licensing model in which customers use floating licenses to access a broad suite of Altair-developed and third party software on demand. The Altair Partner Alliance effectively extends the HyperWorks Platform from more than 20 internally developed solutions to upwards of 60 applications with the addition of new partner applications. Customers can invoke these third-party applications at no incremental cost using their existing HyperWorks licenses.

For more information about the Altair Partner Alliance, visit www.altairhyperworks.com/apa. More about Additive Works at www.additive.works.